4.30pm

Saddam trial 'fundamentally unfair'

Saddam hears he is to face the death penalty at the end of his trial earlier this month: Photo: David Furst/Getty

Saddam Hussein's trial for crimes against humanity was undermined by so many flaws, including political interference and failures to disclose evidence properly, that his conviction is unsound, the New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch said today.

The organisation, one of only two independent bodies allowed to attend every session of the trial, also interviewed dozens of judges and lawyers. It concluded the proceedings were "fundamentally unfair".

Human Rights Watch, which opposes the death penalty, warns that hasty implementation of the death sentence by hanging for the former Iraqi president could deprive thousands of victims of their day in court.

A second trial already under way - covering the Anfal campaign in which hundreds of thousands of Kurds were murdered - would be aborted.

"The tribunal squandered an important opportunity to deliver credible justice to the people of Iraq. And its imposition of the death penalty after an unfair trial is indefensible," said Nehal Buhta, the report's author, an Australian lawyer now working in New York. The court authorities failed to provide adequate protection for defence lawyers and to explain the trial process to the Iraqi population, the report said.

Its main criticism concerns the trial proceedings, which fell short of international standards, partly because of US insistence that it be an Iraqi process. "Unless the Iraqi government allows experienced international judges and lawyers to participate directly, it's unlikely the court can fairly conduct other trials," Mr Bhuta added.

The report takes particular issue with declarations of Saddam Hussein's guilt by Iraqi officials during the trial, and calls by the de-Baathification commission and government ministers for judges and lawyers to be dismissed. Most Iraqi judges were members of the Baath party but the court's checks on them for bias were arbitrary, making every ex-Baathist judge feel nervous and under threat. This was bound to affect their impartiality, Mr Bhuta said.

Arrangements for disclosing evidence amounted to "trial by ambush", the report said. Human Rights Watch documented several instances in which incriminating documents were disclosed to the defence only on the day they were used in court. They included compact discs with recordings of Saddam Hussein talking to colleagues but without any explanation of when, how, or by whom the conversations were intercepted.

The case against Saddam Hussein involved the aftermath of an assassination attempt in Dujail in July 1982. Nearly 800 men, women, and children were detained. Many were tortured. After a year of detention in Baghdad, approximately 400 were exiled to a remote part of southern Iraq. Another 148 male detainees were sentenced to death in 1984.

Human Rights Watch says the case against Saddam Hussein and three senior colleagues on trial was marred by a striking lack of "linkage evidence" to prove his command responsibility. The facts of the victims' detention, exile, and execution were clear, but no detailed evidence established the way decisions were taken or proved that Saddam Hussein had criminal intent.

The chief prosecutor, Jaafar al-Mousawi, defended the trial, calling it "fair and transparent".
"The verdict was fair enough to a dictator who killed dozens of innocents," he said.